


of the same blood

by rhymae



Category: Durarara!!
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, Codependency, Fixation, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Manipulation, POV Second Person, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Post-デュラララ!!×２ 結 | Durarara!!x2 Ketsu, Psychopathology & Sociopathy, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-17
Updated: 2019-08-17
Packaged: 2020-09-05 19:36:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,178
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20278684
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rhymae/pseuds/rhymae
Summary: You always pictured it different.The city collapsing like a star with Izaya in the middle of it, feeding on the flames.Your hands around his throat, Izaya’s knife cutting across you looking for something you can't name and still would never give him.Izaya leaves Ikebukuro. Shizuo doesn't mean to find him.





	of the same blood

**Author's Note:**

>   
**Priest**: There is a kind of purity in you.
> 
> **Hippolytus**: He can't make me good.
> 
> **Priest**: No.
> 
> \- Sarah Kane, Phaedra's Love  
  


He’s different, when you find him.

You’ve seen Izaya twist himself into too many shapes in different ways, but you’ve never seen him like this. 

There’s an uneven mix of the light pollution surrounding you in this foreign city, unfiltered moonlight refraction, and maybe that’s what makes him look so _ wrong _against the lighting. 

He looks like a shadow. 

Like the wrong side of a self. Sick in the way where one wrong push could send him toppling over. 

He’s always been on the wrong side of too skinny, but this is different. 

The glow isn’t luminous, isn’t anything you’re expecting, so much so that you can’t even place it at first.

The light tricks you down to this moment- you in some foreign city you don’t remember the name of after you bought the ticket, staring across the pavement into one of Izaya’s many selves.

Izaya would laugh if he knew.

You remembered the city name from when Shira let it slip all the way to the right platform of station before it washed itself away. 

And time seems to blur between now and then, with Izaya’s eyes burning into you across the gap like he's saying _finally_, or _careful careful careful_, even if you don't know just who between you the word is meant for.

It’s familiar and foreign, here, how neither of you have to speak to still hear each other’s name across the gap.

.

Really, you have always navigated the chases like a series of dances. 

Izaya runs and you follow and the city fades to the background where it used to be the forefront. 

The translation between you both gets muddled, sometimes, where the lines used to be cleaner. 

You aren’t young like you were in Raira. 

You’re still in your twenties but you aren’t _ kids _anymore, no matter how much Izaya never wants to stop being one.

The days you’re lucky enough to corner him into an alley, moments before he always finds a way to move past you, you think maybe it’s something as simple as age that pricks the line of unspoken understanding between you both. 

It’s the times when Izaya’s knife finds home in your skin, trying to bleed you out like the metal _ belongs _there, that you think maybe the confused translation is all a one sided theory. 

One you’ve held onto for too long and this is just the time of its breaking. 

A cut doesn’t equal a challenge the same way that when one of you draws blood, the other knows better than to let up. 

A switch blade means something different now, besides just the start of a fight, never nearly the end of it. 

Izaya would say, "_T___ry_ me_, monster.” 

And it means more than it ever did. With street lights painted across both your backs no matter how much you try to outrun them.

You hear it on the streets of Ikebukuro before you’ve even walked them, stuck between nightmares, tucked under every title the two of you ever won for yourselves.

You imagine him laughing. The same as he did when he nearly bled out right in front of you, throwing himself down a roof. 

.

You’ve always had a penchant for finding him and apparently it spans from city to city. 

Any street he’s ever crossed calls to you in a way that makes your blood burn something like golden before the rest of you can even think to catch up.

It makes sense, of course. Even the entirety of Ikebukuro couldn’t hold you two in it forever.

Still, it’s hesitance and so much more that keeps you from calling your ability to find him a gift. 

You don’t think anything you’ve ever done to each other can be considered that. 

The visible strain in Izaya’s stance, taunt legs and too straight arms, solidifies it, and you feel your stomach ice over when placing exactly _ where _the city carved into him.

You’re outside the streets you’ve dedicated yourself to wiping him clean of, but you’d still recognize him anywhere. 

Nearly a decade together can do that to you, even if it still terrifies you to think about.

Moonlight glares off the busy sidewalk you’re stopped on and it makes the red in his eyes glow like blood. 

Like he’s half-dead out of his habitat, rusted ruby and waiting in the worst of ways since you’ve ever known him.

It makes the gap look almost sacred like this, untouched before the chaos.

Izaya only moves after you take the first step.

He doesn't make it a block over before you're behind him.

.

Izaya doesn’t have to come back to Ikebukuro for it to all burn down anyway. 

Even you can’t fault him for that. 

Though you tried, of course. A near decade of interference doesn’t just disappear with its keeper overnight, and it doesn’t stay away for a year, either.

You always pictured it different. 

The city collapsing like a star with Izaya in the middle of it, feeding on the flames. 

Your hands around his throat, Izaya’s knife cutting across you looking for something you’ll never give him.

You’ve never had an exact word for what he is, what he _ does_, the same way the lines you paved between you both have always found a way to blur.

Shinra looks at you like he’s seeing through you when you tell him so, the two of you sat around his dining room with Celty joining half-way through.

It’d be the picture of domesticity, if the stitches across your side weren’t freshly sewn. 

You aren’t alone in your suspicions of the city falling into itself. Celty feels it too. 

With the way she’s been called back and forth all week for different overlapping mob runs the past month, it’s easy to piece together how they’re trying to dry themselves up quick as they can.

It isn’t exactly a comfort.

Celty pulls out her PDA after Shinra finally puts down the needle and types: [I never thought things could wrap up like this. So clean.]

You nearly laugh, because nothing about Ikebukuro has ever been _ clean_. 

And maybe Celty realizes it, places the words in the pause she takes before typing again.

[It makes you wonder….]

Her fingers don’t move on the PDA for a moment before she lifts it, hesitant in a way that hints of what’s to come.

[It makes you wonder just how much Izaya kept rolling.]

Shinra smiles, blank eyed and careful in the way he only is when he knows something. 

It makes your shoulder tense against the couch. 

The rush feels foreign, distant, like the city’s grown to be without someone to hold it in place. 

You’ve never been afraid of change, but it’s times like this that make you wonder just how used to stagnant Izaya let you get while he was still here.

Shinra says, “Well, he always did know how to keep a dead machine running. Most times, I think that’s what made him so-”

He rolls his hand in the air, looking for something you all know but can’t put a name to, before lowering it with a grin. 

When Shinra laughs, the sound cracks sharp against the walls. 

“Really, he’s just always had a talent for reshaping broken things.”

.

Logically, it would make sense that what brought you here is the same as what dragged you away in the first place. 

But logic never directly applies to your foundations when Izaya is involved.

When Izaya says, a different face in a foreign city, sitting atop a city building he led you to between alley chases from the street, swinging the legs you thought you’d wrecked beyond mobility: “So, you’ve found me, then.”

You think, _ I didn’t mean to_. Or, _ I never really went looking_. Or even, _ I nearly beat it out of Shinra after fourteen months of silence before he let it slip. _

But you don’t say anything. 

Instead, you stand behind him, watching him watch the ground without seeing it, unsure of your place again now that you’ve found him.

He must be expecting the silence for the way he lets his lips split at it. 

“I can’t say I expected you to still be playing the part of a human in a monster’s body. You aren’t one of them, you know."

Izaya glances over his shoulder, shadow eyed and smirking and says, "Just when are you going to _ get _it, Shizu-chan?”

The title feels like fire when he says it, eyes dark enough to attach the double meaning, even if you didn’t already know everything he says comes with one.

From what you can see of Izaya’s foundations, of what he’s _ allowed _you to see, saying a thousand things compressed into one is nearly his trademark at this point.

He could mean a thousand things from it.

Like, _interesting how_ _the chases keep going_. And: _I thought our last fight made that clear._ Or, _you followed the lines for once, Shizu-chan, congrats_. 

Or even something as simple as:_ I won. _

You want to say, _ I won’t always come when you call for me_. Or, _ I thought you were _ dead _ for over a year_. But the words have never felt right coming off your tongue.

You say, “I’m not.” And don’t specify which question you are answering.

Izaya’s smirk already tells you both what a lie that is, before the words even think to leave your mouth.

It makes you want to break something, but that’s nothing new with him.

You’ve always been rage, but there’s a special cocktail end of it that Izaya formed just for himself.

The smell of a different city with him still webbed in the middle just makes it hotter across your tongue.

.

You hate him. 

You never thought you could hate someone so clean cut before. Never let yourself, before, if you’re being honest.

But then there was Izaya and you and the blood he split first. The road it led you down that neither of you gets to come back from. 

When Izaya says, always too taunting, always too _ close_, “Keep up, Shizu-Chan.” 

It translates to _ monster _ and _ blood _ and all the times you’ve made this city even more scared of you than you ever wanted. 

The unspoken, _ come find me _ he bleeds in, the last time, between empty streets and shattered arms and a stray static phone call you catch in Shinra’s apartment, burns worse than you thought it could. 

.

Sometimes, you like to think that you can track every stitch he’s ever given you down to the cut.

It feels like a million years ago now, running around the city in the high school uniform you could never keep from being bloodied. Izaya always three steps ahead and everything else around you a blur.

On bad days, you think that’s just how he always wanted it. 

Him always too close to cut, and you chasing him until the city became just another backdrop to the two of you.

The thought alone makes you want to sick in the way only reserved for him.

Izaya says, quiet, years down the line with his back still to you in a form of false intimacy, “Why are you _ here_, Shizuo?” 

Like he doesn’t already know the answer, like he’s waiting for something. 

For some skeleton to jump out of the closet, or maybe for all the months you spent thinking you’d finally killed him to play themselves back into this moment.

  
  
It’s so wrong you almost _ laugh_, and wouldn’t that just make everything even more fucked up, as if it could make any of this _ better. _

As if he hasn’t been the one writing the rules to every game you've ever followed.

.

Shinra had said, once, back too long ago to fight over if he was more Izaya’s friend or yours, how Izaya had a way of working people into what he wanted them to be.

You should have believed him then. Instead of tearing down fences at the sight of anything too red in the eyes.

Of course, that is maybe what makes it all come together anyway.

You’ve been called _ suicidal _ in the same sentence as _ monster_, and— well. That makes two of you, now.

If that isn’t telling of the city surrounding you, you don’t know what it.

There’s only ever been one monster in Ikebukuro, and it’s never been you.

But Izaya always liked to test the theory to the edge. 

The loads of property damage you did across high school steam rolled into his broken legs, his stumbling body bearing the final proof of it he always wanted. 

And even then you could still hear him laughing.

You could still hear the _ careful, Shizu-chan _ after the empty chase, the _ tsk_s tracing your every missed punch. 

The_ Do it, monster _ that still follows you now, more than you thought it would.

The trick of it, you guess, after everything, is that Izaya never had to go so far to find the proof he wanted.

Even if it’s not the kind he hoped

.

Izaya laughs, and it’s unsurprising when it comes out empty, blade twisted back into his pocket. 

“I like to think of it as more than just a _ game_, Shizu-chan. After all the planning put into it, too.”

It clicks too late, maybe, all of it in a rush that makes you nauseous quick and your blood cold in your veins. Spins pictures of broken legs and a bloodied mouth.

You say, quick, before the possibility of what brought you here can overwhelm you: “I can’t be what you’re wanting.” 

Because you have always been the most honest between the two of you. 

And when Izaya’s eyes harden, you almost take a step back from the anger there.

You aren't stupid enough to think he can’t hurt you when he wants to.

“No,” he says, soft, taking a step forward before you can take one back, leaning his forehead onto yours. 

With anyone else, it would be the most tender touch someone ever shared with you.

With Izaya everything has only ever been too sharp.

“I really think you could be better.”

.

You can trace each other down to every end of the country, but you both know, now, how it will always come back down to the constants.

Your hands and his vitriol; your actions and his consequences. 

All the times Izaya asked you, between chases and fights and back alley looks you didn’t talk about outside of them: “What about it, monster?”

And how you never thought it would echo back to _ this_. 

You never thought he’d be the first to make the strings between you tangible, one hand pushing itself into the fire.

But Izaya has always been the one to know exactly how to get what he wants. 

The one to know how to properly toe the line between desire and fear where it has always shifted. 

And, well, _ you _have always known how to draw a monster out from hiding

You should be more terrified by it, of course. 

But it is your body that has never known how to read _ right _between you both.

.

You don’t remember how many nights you’ve been gone from Ikebukuro.

The city Izaya’s carved a place for himself in reeks of forced stability and quiet charm, and it makes your stomach churn at the thought that he’s built a new life _ here_.

That he left Ikebukuro behind him like the present you always asked for but never really wanted.

You vaguely remember taking the week off from Tom, but you can’t place how many nights ago it’s been between that and your newfound place in Izaya’s hotel room.

You don’t ask him to come back, and he doesn’t ask you to leave.

You don’t know if it’s a draw or a calculated battle to see who breaks first. To see who needs the other _ more_, even if the answer’s always been obvious.

You say, when the silence becomes too much: “There are these new kids in town.”

Izaya hums, pulls closer against you, and it hits you, suddenly, how in tune to the sound you are.

How it could come from across the country or against your back and he would still sound the same to you.

You don’t think about it. 

“Celty says they’re going to Raira. Apparently one’s stupid strong and the other’s got his hands in every gang left in the city.”

The words are enough to peak Izaya’s interest, and he goes quiet against the sheets.

You wet your lips, say, more careful than you are used to: “It makes you think. About back then, I mean, and us. If things could have been different.”

Maybe if Shinra had waited until after that gang, or if Izaya had met _ you _first. 

If something had given before it had the chance to shatter into something else.

When Izaya says, too quiet for how loud the room has grown around you: “Oh, Shizuo.”

You can’t even say you weren’t expecting it.

.

Izaya’s in too many of your dreams.

It’s not a stretch, with the way he’s always in your mind the same way you wish you could just tear him out. 

Sometimes, they mix into your memories until you aren’t sure which side comes out right.

You watch yourself say, after the latest chase, when high school and Ikebukuro and city streets all blend until they’re indecipherable: “I don’t want to keep finding you.”

And Izaya, face shadowed enough to hide in the way only he ever could, says: “Well, I guess we don’t always get the things we want. Do we, Shizu-chan?”

You can feel the scar across your chest bruising when you wake up. 

In others, it’s the other sides to all your fixed rage: 

Izaya bleeding out, no one around to stop any of it— you left standing with the knife.

Izaya laughing and laughing and _ laughing, _even after all the street lights go out.

.

You don’t know what locks him in place.

Maybe it’s the suffocating air, or Celty’s worried text that tell you you’ve been gone for two weeks, or everything leading up to this moment finally pressing down. 

Either way, Izaya’s apartment still looks the same, even with your blood strewn across it. 

It’s not a comfort.

Izaya takes a step and you think of it like a ledge, watching the slides crumble while your still standing on them. Izaya the one pulling them out. 

You’ve never known the right combination to set him off. 

Izaya doesn’t smile when he speaks. Doesn’t look anything but blank and regressed and rehearsed and it’s the most you’ve ever been scared of him. 

“What are you waiting for, Shizu-Chan? You’re here, aren’t you? If you think about it, it’s almost like old times.” 

His smirk spreads like a crack against your skull.

“Just think,” he says, and neither of you move. You can’t read him like this, closed off from whatever brink he was teetering on with you as the trigger.

“We could finish this here, finally. For good.”

And he has to know the image he evokes with it. 

All the stupid taunts he’s said hundreds of times before, in the city streets, in alley corners, before he left for good, Raira when all that stood between you was glass windows, watching the dark edge teetering between you both dip.

Threats you know he can’t follow up on contrasted by questions you know he can.

All the things you never wanted splayed out in front of you like an offering.

You say, instead, “I've told you. I can’t be that.”

And don’t have to see the knife that lands beside your ear to know it’s there.

It’s unfair the most it has ever been that you don’t have the answers you both can’t stop searching for.

.

You lied. 

Your hate has never been clean cut. 

At least, not like this. And never with him, no matter how much you’ve ever wanted it to be. 

Shinra says, when you ask, two months before Izaya’s left, with nothing but phone calls to track you back to him: “It’s almost like someone hot wired his brain. The way he processes emotion is unprecedented.”

And you don’t say a thing, just wait for Celty to type out something on her PDA, because this is the one fight you don’t want to have with Izaya. 

And, well, you’ve never exactly had the words for what it is you do to each other, what you’ve molded each other into, but, still— you burn with it. 

Even in his absence you burn with him, _ from _him, and if that makes the ash in your mouth taste even more bitter, well, you still don’t give it a name. 

Shinra hums when Celty pulls her phone away and doesn’t look up from the table, something crossing his face that you can’t read when he says: “He knows what he’s doing.”

And you wonder if you should believe him. 

You wonder, really, how much better at reading Izaya Shinra has been all these years. 

.

He leads you out onto a roof, of course.

Because you've been wrong about too many things in your life, but you'd still know how to read certain pieces of Izaya blindfolded.

It's cold and biting and nothing like what's been left for you in Ikebukuro.

Izaya's slower than he used to be, but he still runs at you. He gets some cuts in, even without the element of surprise on his side.

You throw the first punch and miss. 

The second one makes him flinch in a way that makes you want to puke because it's not fair, _it's not fair_ how Izaya now wears the same look as anyone else who's ever crossed you.

Maybe you've gone soft, or maybe it's that look replaying over and over in your head, but the third one lands just enough to knock him slightly to the left. Right before he ducks and slashes against your stomach. 

This time though, when you hit him straight on, you watch his head snap back.

It doesn't feel like a victory.

.

The truth hits like freezing irony, sometimes. 

Because, when it comes down to it, you can be all of the monster he’s ever called you, but Izaya’s always been the one starving with it.

You don’t like to think of yourself as the product of what he’s created, but only one of you can keep trying to outrun the truths you’ve made for yourselves. And it’s never been you.

He can’t outrun you the same way you can’t stop chasing him, and you wonder when it will finally be enough. 

What it will take to ease the burning under your blood.

It’s the _ winner _coming out of it all that still needs determining. If he’ll even let there be one.

There’s an unwritten law at this point, all but carved across your skin, either way leaving the message all too visible to the city surrounding you. 

Wherever Orihara Izaya goes, Heiwajima Shizuo will follow. 

Because from all of it, _ this _is what you come down to:

You and him, the pieces you’ve scattered across in the chase, a city caught between you. 

Izaya and his bones you felt _ shatter _against your hands, the way he wore peace like a cape that lead you around the city like a ghost for months.

How even all the blood in the world can’t wash you two clean of each other.

.

Izaya laughs and he looks like he’s crying, a stranger's face shadowed on his. 

And when he lifts himself back off from the pavement his movements are stalled.

He talks himself through the movements with some condescending babel you aren't paying attention because you're staring at how hard his legs are shaking. 

_Old injuries, _you think.

And then:_ Recent old injuries_, your mind fills in too late, and suddenly you're sick with it.

With him and the years you both wasted with your names on everyone's tongues and how it landed you both here.

Izaya says something else you can’t make out aside from the _ Shizu-chan _attached, but it feels too much like the bubbling question you’ve never had the right answer for.

Too many times, you think, he says your name like a preemptive jump.

You don’t know how many towns you’ve chased him across to get to _ here_, cities torn from the inside you’ve run yourselves out of. 

There is no time here. There never is when it’s him and you.

Two weeks and you can’t think anything past, _ I followed it all back_. And: _ I’m not I’m not I’m not._

And, _ What you said to me- _

You say, “_Izaya_.” 

And it’s a plea for the impossible, for what he knows but he’ll never give _ you_. 

It still comes out like a question, like it’s an answer in and of itself. 

You feel how deep the city burns when Izaya's eyes only edge further into maniac, knife pointed forward, grinning a shadow right back.

.

**Author's Note:**

> “What I know I know, what my   
body knows it knows, it likes to   
slip the flesh of my mind and go and   
look at him, like an animal   
looking at water, then going to it”
> 
> \- Sharon Olds
> 
> This took me so much longer than it should have, but i have thoughts.
> 
> Thank you for reading! I hope you enjoyed! Comments & kudos are so appreciated and make me very happy <3. Find me on tumblr @rhymaes
> 
> I own nothing & the title is from Louise Gluck.


End file.
